Support Seen for Lifting Iraq Sanctions

Published 8:00 pm, Monday, May 19, 2003

The United States predicted Tuesday it will have "substantial support" for a resolution to lift U.N. sanctions against Iraq and allow the country's oil revenue to finance its reconstruction.

U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said the Bush administration wants the Security Council to vote this week, possibly as early as Wednesday, on the resolution, which would also authorize the U.S.-led coalition to run Iraq until it has an internationally recognized government.

Secretary of State Colin Powell worked the phones on Tuesday to win support for a newly revised draft resolution, introduced late Monday.

He spoke twice to Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and once to Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, as well as the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Spain.

Powell said last week he hoped for a 15-0 vote in the Security Council and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher reiterated that Tuesday.

"We think we have and will have substantial support," Boucher said in Washington.

Russia, France and China, which expressed serious concerns about the first two drafts, were studying the third version, which Negroponte said was the "final form."

"We believe that this draft resolution deserves strong support from the council as a whole, and I believe it will receive it," Negroponte said late Monday.

Even if Russia, France and China don't support the final draft, none of the three permanent council members has talked about vetoing the resolution. Instead, they would likely abstain, a possibility raised Monday by French President Jacques Chirac.

Asked whether France would go along or abstain, Boucher said Tuesday: "Whether France wants to vote for a resolution that will help the Iraqi people is for France to decide."

The new draft gives the United Nations a clearly defined role in establishing a democratic government and increases the stature of a U.N. envoy in Iraq. But it also leaves the United States and Britain, as occupying powers, firmly in control of Iraq and its oil wealth until "an internationally recognized, representative government" takes office.

Billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros warned Tuesday that the resolution would establish an indefinite American protectorate sanctioned by the United Nations and paid for by Iraq's oil revenue.

He urged the Security Council to give the United Nations more power in post-war Iraq and limit the U.S. and British occupation, proposing specific changes to the latest draft. But he told a news conference at the United Nations that all he could realistically hope for were changes in "a few words here and there."

Pakistan's U.N. Ambassador Munir Akram, the current council president, scheduled a closed-door meeting Tuesday to discuss the new draft and said he expects "fairly intensive discussion."

Changes can be made in the draft until the vote takes place.

The council was trying to avoid another diplomatic blowout like the one over the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which the majority of members opposed. France, Russia, China and Germany, which refused to authorize military action, were being more circumspect about their concerns with the current resolution.

"We are now examining ways and means to rebuild Iraq, to restore peace and security in Iraq, and the approach of all members is a constructive role toward that end," Akram said.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, whose country co-sponsored the resolution, said: "I think that the atmosphere has been surprisingly positive and constructive given what we've gone through."

Nonetheless, there was some grumbling at U.S. efforts to push through a new, complicated resolution in 48 hours.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov said the new draft "contains a lot of technical things" that need to be studied and some issues still need further clarification _ including how long the occupation will last.

Greenstock expressed hope that council members will agree on the resolution, which he said would give the United Nations "a very distinct and vital role."

The final draft makes a number of substantive changes, trying to address many countries' concerns that the United Nations was being relegated to coordinating humanitarian aid, helping with reconstruction and having a limited political role.

In other key changes, the U.N. oil-for-food humanitarian program would be phased out over six months, instead of four months, meeting a concern of the French and the Russians. They wanted more time to wind up contracts and hand over to Iraq the humanitarian program, which had been feeding 90 percent of Iraq's 24 million people before the war.

The new text asks Secretary-General Kofi Annan to appoint a special representative with "independent powers" to work with the United States and Britain "to facilitate a process leading to an internationally recognized, representative government of Iraq." The previous texts referred to a U.N. "special coordinator," a lower status.

Annan wouldn't comment on the resolution Tuesday but said he would move quickly once it is passed to appoint a special representative who would start work in Iraq "as soon as is practicable."